Tuesday, March 31, 2015

No-name progress I.

The guy on the left was already well on the way down and out when the photograph was taken in 2010. A-and, truth be told, this here 'one-plus-three-point' plan is most likely a foregone conclusion too - a shell game with the pea being a miracle.

His friend gives 'im a telephone, boughten not bespoke, paid-for. It is not a perfect transaction but he is trying to be kind. What he don't didn't, doesn't, can't, won't see is the reason it was ever got rid of - simply that it (almost) never rang. Now it (almost) never rings. Nothing is changed.

As the denominator comes closer and closer to (almost) never it's a cusp and out pop limits and calculus and all the sweet (predictable) music of the revolving spheres. But I am one who looks at the crescent moon to see if she still holds water cupped in her hands.

Beyond limits is Heisenberg's uncertainty around position and momentum which brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to ... the far more satisfying quantum conclusion that either the universe is ... or is not, never was. ... A way a lone a last a loved a long the

Einstein sez "God don't play dice," but it seems to me like ... if He was He might.Green Party:

Round 1: (March 2) Go out to hear Elizabeth May and she sure seems to be telling the truth. Decide to follow it up. (March 7.) Leave a message for the one person I remember from the last time I tried it on with the Greens in this riding. Find a website with an email address and send one. Leave a message on the main Green Party site. Nadinha! Zilch!

Round 2: (March 20.) Remember that Charlie Halpern was once kind. Leave a message on his site; he responds immediately and forwards the question; the person I was thinking of answers and promises to include me in the next riding meeting. (March 23.)Three Point Plan:

1) TSP / Trinity St. Paul's: (March 22.) Visit TSB for Sunday service and meet Bob Fugere who promises to inform me of their next monthly meeting. (March 26.) He follows up with a gracious email explaining that the meeting hasn't been scheduled yet and he will tell me when it is.

2) Beaches United: I am blocked on this somehow. I keep formulating plans to go over, or telephone, or email - and then just don't do it. An open item then.

3) UofT: The divestment appears to be in the hands of 350 - a project on the go since 2013. Two hundred and eighty seven pages of 'Brief' and growing. (March 24.) Go to their scheduled weekly meeting. It is evident that their focus is raising money. Someone promises to send me the minutes. (March 26.) The lovely young Executive Assistant follows through, not with the minutes but with membership on the list. (March 28.) Go along to the Green Show. A bust. If there is a less gracious way to accomplish anything you'll find it first in Toronto. The 350 guy gives me the brush off. At least I manage to get rid of a big bag of e-waste. (March 30.) Sure enough, there is list email - interesting stuff too it is.

[TO BE CONTINUED ...]

Emily is 12 years old. Sharie is her mother. Emily has been competing in beauty pagents since she was 4 years old.

To begin meetings with a salute to the 'First Nations' is a good reminder that this is all, always has been, stolen land. As long as one is also mindful of corrupt band councils, and aware of large mammal extinctions before the coming of the 'white man' and so on.

Or ... Laerte, a transsexual (with a double 'ss'), Patrick White, Rimbaud (from an era when sexual activity was determined by anal inspection carried out by licensed professionals).

Re-reading Patrick White: 'Riders in the Chariot' (1961), 'The Solid Mandala' (1966), and 'A Fringe of Leaves' (1976). So many occasions when his words seem to be coming straight through the aether. No mistake that a number of deep friendships develop during the brief weeks reading 'Riders' at MUN so many years ago. (Of course we imagine ourselves a skein of Zaddiks - mensch being beyond our grasp.) And yet, also replete with pettiness - eloquent AND petty. :-)

I'll actually exist? You will. I exist? You Exist.

It's not just some kind of illusion?
No. It's not that.

I'm really going to turn into Wow! I feel much better. If I'd known I'd have
a woman? You are. So you say. switched years ago.

The machine didn't exist back then.

Alan Rusbridger's Guardian initiative has hit a few wrinkles. Notably financial links from the purveyors of fossil fuel into The Guardian's own coffers. What is evident now is that he really is playing by ear. And likely (also) hoping for a miracle. This is good.
On the other hand, he is playing so openly and so transparently that this ... confusion (let's call it) comes off positively. It mirrors almost perfectly the ambiguous complicity around this issue in the heart of everyman.

What he needs now is some small victory: possibly convincing his own colleagues - in the Guardian Media Group (GMG) & Scott Trust - to divest; or a softer target such as the Anglican Church; something - even a huge jump in the petition signers, from 140,000 to millions could conceivably turn the tide.

Keeping in mind that this is the third-last stanza out of twenty five, four lines out of a hundred. Taken from Le Bateau Ivre, 1883, and an English translation by Oliver Bernard, 1962. Of course it's well worth going to the library and having a look at Samuel Beckett's translation (which is not available anywhere on-line that I can find).

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!

She's having a ball.

Who could object?

And yet these images and the story (or the parts of the story that are not told) disturb, upset, sadden; and the wondering about this girl, her mother, and the photographer, just carries on ...

Chris Hedges fulminates about violence to women, pornography, prostitution. What do you call whatever it is that is happening to Emily then?